Merchants often have access to a vast number of products and services that are uniquely available to them due to their position. For instance, as merchants often interact with a vast number of consumers on a daily basis, merchants may be offered products regarding identification of information about their consumers, market information in their industry and/or geographic area, and services for reaching or enticing more consumers. In some cases, products or services that may be offered to a merchant may include or utilize sensitive data that may be misused if distributed to someone other than the merchant. For example, data that utilizes information regarding a merchant's clientele and income may be detrimental to that merchant if distributed to a competitor.
As a result, many products and services may seek to try and verify the identity of an entity purporting to be a specific merchant. Traditionally, service providers often employ personnel that can work directly with an employee or owner of a merchant to verify that merchant's identity, such as by asking questions that only that merchant or an authorized individual associated therewith should know, requesting proof of address, etc. However, such systems can be time consuming and labor intensive, and may also only provide evidence that the individual purporting to be associated with the merchant has sufficient knowledge of that merchant; not that they are authorized on behalf of the actual merchant. Such systems often rely on subjective human judgment rather than objective facts, and can be difficult to implement on a large scale allowing for thousands or tens of thousands of authorizations in a given time period. There are a number of technical challenges to such systems, both as to consistency, accuracy and an inability to scale.
Thus, there is a need for a technical solution where an entity may be verified through technological processes to provide certainty as to the entity's identity via their control of data and information directly associated with that entity that cannot be faked without compromise of the entity as a whole. Though not essential, such a system could be more accurate, consistent and/or scalable by taking a different, technology-based approach.